Monckton: Climate Sensitivity Is About 2 Degrees F

SPPI announces that, by an astonishing 15 distinct methods, Christopher Monckton of Brenchley demonstrates in his latest SPPI technical paper Empirical determination of climate sensitivity that the global warming we can expect in response to the doubling of CO2 concentration that is expected this century will be around 2 F, not the IPCC’s central estimate of 6 F.

Monckton said: “My commentary shows that there is really no need for any more spending of taxpayers’ money on ‘global warming’. There is not going to be enough of it to matter. That does not seem to be a message the editors of most climate journals want to hear.

Four of the 15 methods of determining climate sensitivity – the amount of warming to be expected if CO2 doubles – are based on looking at recent trends in global temperature. Warming since 1950, when CO2 emissions began in earnest, has occurred at a rate of 2 F per century. Again, comparing the warming since 1950 with the radiative forcings, climate sensitivity works out at just 2 F. Doing the same comparison since 1750 also gives a climate sensitivity of 2 F. And if the maximum rate of warming that lasted more than a decade since global temperature records began in 1850 were to become the average rate of warming for the next 90 years, global temperatures would rise by – yes, 2 F.

Four of the 15 methods demonstrate climate sensitivities implicit but not stated in the literature. Kiehl & Trenberth (1997) assumed that because surface temperature was 59 F (or 288 Kelvin), the flux of outgoing radiation from the Earth’s surface must be 390 Watts per square meter. Monckton shows that, if that were the case, the authors would be implying a climate sensitivity of 2 F.

Again, in the same paper, the authors say that compared with having no greenhouse gases in today’s atmosphere the world would be about 60 F (33 K) cooler, and there would be 101 Watts per squer meter less radiative forcing than the whole atmosphere now exerts. This, too, with startling and indefeasible simplicity, implies just 2 F of warming in response to a CO2 doubling.

Santer and others (2003) thought that if and only if we were the cause, warming in the tropical upper air would be thrice that at the tropical surface. But the tropical air appears to be warming no faster than the surface. If so, climate sensitivity is just 2 F. Another paper, by Wentz and others (2007), says evaporation from the Earth’s surface is happening three times faster than the models had predicted – once again implying 2 F climate sensitivity.

Five of the 15 methods came straight from the peer-reviewed journals. Shaviv (2005) found that if and only if the influence of cosmic rays first suggested by Svensmark were present half a dozen distinct climate sensitivities from various eras agreed with one another: 2 F of warming would occur at any doubling of CO2 concentration. Paltridge and others (2009) reported that there was less water vapor in the upper air than had been thought, again suggesting a climate sensitivity of 2 F. Lindzen and Choi (2011) found that long-wave radiation from the Earth’s surface was reaching outer space much as before, suggesting 2 F climate sensitivity. Spencer & Braswell (2011), analysing the cloud feedback and finding it as strongly net-negative as the IPCC considers it net-positive, found climate sensitivity to be 2 F.

Many other such papers could have been cited. They have one thing in common – they are based not on the expensive guesswork that is computer modeling of the climate, but on hard evidence and data from the real world.

The 15th and final method puts process engineering together with climatology and demonstrates that the maximum closed-loop gain in an object (such as an electronic circuit or the climate) on which feedbacks operate is just 0.1, implying not only that climate sensitivity cannot much exceed 2 F but also that under all conditions 2 F the theoretical upper limit for global warming in response to doubled CO2 in the air.

Bob Ferguson, president of SPPI, said: “This intriguing series of 15 distinct results from the temperature data, from peer-reviewed papers on both sides of the climate debate and, above all, from fundamental theory produces a coherent result – just 2 F of warming in response to a doubling of CO2 concentration. If accurate, no longer can anyone say the only result obtainable from the data or the literature is the so-called ‘official’ result. Climate-extremists talk of a ‘consensus of evidence’.

“Insofar as that loose phrase has any meaning, the growing real-world ‘consensus’, well reflected in the peer-reviewed literature and in the data, is that this century the world may warm by just 2 F in response to a doubling of CO2 concentration – and, on any view, that is not enough to do harm. The computer models probably have exaggerated global warming threefold, but the old-fashioned way to do science – observation, measurement, and the application of proven theory to the results – has shown they are likely wrong.”

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